How Much Do You Love Danny Phantom?
by Lisa Von Cooper
Summary: A short but important question has been presented to the girls (and boys) in both Amity Park and the Ghost Zone. Read on to find out their true feelings about the halfa, and decide for yourself who loves Danny Phantom the most. A series of oneshots.
1. Sam Manson

**How Much Do You Love Danny Phantom?**

 **Author's Note: Since "How Much Do You Love Timmy Turner?" has become my most reviewed and most favourited story on this site, I'm trying my hand at a similar style for** _ **Danny Phantom**_ **. Each oneshot asks someone the titular question and chronicles how they react. This all takes place after "Phantom Planet" and the responses will be coloured by this. I hope you enjoy reading! Feel free to leave a review as well!**

 **Sam Manson**

Isn't it obvious how much I love him? Haven't you seen us together on TV? Haven't you read the magazine articles analysing our body language and concluding that we're madly in love?

After Danny saved the world, all the attention has been on us, and it's not letting up. They're following our every move on the news channels. They're asking us when we'll get engaged. They're even inventing names for us on the Internet. (Names I don't really understand. Amethyst Ocean? We're people, not a shampoo. What's wrong with a simple portmanteau, like Brangelina? But I guess we'd have to be Dam, and I'd rather be named after a fruity shampoo than something messy built by beavers.)

 _Anyway_ , I think it's pretty clear that we're an item.

But I still need to defend myself. Journalists have been putting out these claims that I'm only into the Phantom side, that ghosts are part of my "Goth thing", that I wouldn't have given Danny a second glance if he'd simply been an average kid that no-one understood.

Well, those rumours are just that – rumours. They only work if you believe the lie that I became his friend _after_ he got his powers. Any Casper High student can tell you that I've actually known Danny since pre-school. In third grade, Danny took the blame when we locked ourselves in the school freezer, even though I'd been the one to lure him in with a tall tale about bottomless ice cream tubs. And in fifth grade, we built a model ghost town for an English project, moulding the glowing green figurines out of ectoplasmic residue from his parents' lab. I've still got the thing at the bottom of my wardrobe (minus the figurines, on Mrs Fenton's orders).

Yes, it probably was seeing Danny flying in ghost form, with sunlight in his hair like a halo, which first pushed us out of our friendship and into our romance. But that doesn't mean I've forgotten what he was like before. He was _always_ cute. He was _always_ funny. He was _always_ there for me when I needed help – he didn't want to let me down. We've made so many memories together and I would never give those up, not even if he lost his ghost powers.

In fact, it's my fault he got his powers at all.

What if I _hadn't_ brought my camera to his house and encouraged Danny to take a look inside the Ghost Portal? What if he had never been zapped with ecto-energy? Would things have been worse if he'd always been normal, if he'd carried on living a boring quiet life? Would things have been better if he didn't become so unusual?

Because – I'm going to be honest with you – Danny and I had a lot of fights about the Accident. There were nights when it seemed as though everything I did was wrong. Tucker threw the Thermos at me and I didn't catch it. I dodged Skulker's blast only for the beam to hit yet another store, costing Amity Park even more in damages. And after an evening of racing hearts and near-misses, a little friendly pointer from me about how Danny could do better next time would make something snap.

He turned around and shouted at me. He said I didn't know what it was like to be hunted like an animal by merciless predators. He said I didn't know what it was like to be afraid of my own parents and run away from their hugs in case I was electrocuted. He said I didn't know what it was like to feel so powerful that I could kill somebody just by blinking. He said I didn't know what it was like to be haunted by visions of a future in which I slaughter innocent people with my bare hands. Those were the nights when I almost thought he would murder me. The air would turn green and everything around us would shake, ready to leap up at his command and tear me to pieces. I won't forget those clenched fists or those bared teeth or those wild eyes or that throbbing vein in his forehead any time soon.

I always thought that being unique was good. But I guess it's also pretty lonely. Danny was right. I _didn't_ know what it was like to be half-ghost. And that meant no-one else knew, except Danny himself (and the fruit loop I'm not going to name). Where was he supposed to go when it all got too much? He couldn't exactly lean on the girl who caused all his problems in the first place. She would make him remember all the problems he wanted to forget.

Sometimes I think I'm going crazy. While Danny's finally accepted his role as the hero of Amity Park, I've been the one screaming spit into his face while he stands there in shock. All the horrors suddenly pile on top of me and I need to offload. Tucker wouldn't have needed to sew any wounds closed if it wasn't for me! The Disasteroid wouldn't have threatened the whole planet if it wasn't for me! That evil future self, who could still break out of his Thermos, wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for me!

I've spent too many evenings crying, apologising, clinging on to Danny and wishing I'd never put him through all that. He keeps peeling my fingers away from his shirt and telling me I'm being ridiculous. I really ought to listen to him.

I mean, a lot of things _have_ changed for the better because of the Accident. Tucker's better with technology; he loved that stuff before, but now he's proved how the weirdest ideas can actually be helpful to somebody. I'm better at standing up for myself; I tried to do that before, but now I feel stronger, and defeat doesn't drain me in the way it used to.

And Danny? He's grown the most out of the three of us. Tucker's still obviously Tucker, and I'm still obviously me, but sometimes, when a ghost attacks, I watch Danny leap into action and I forget about the nervous dork he used to be. I see a warrior with a Thermos, fighting to defend the things he cares about. I see a soldier with snow-white hair, promising to protect his town for as long as he lives. I see a guardian angel in a black jumpsuit.

I see a man.


	2. Valerie Gray

**Author's Note: Thank you for the reviews! I take your point about Danny and Sam not looking like a good couple. My interpretations will inevitably be coloured by my own opinions. My OTP has shifted from Gray Ghost to Shallow Sapphire to Phantom Rocker and back to Shallow Sapphire again, but Amethyst Ocean has never appealed to me in the same way. That's probably why I can't get too "fired up" when writing from Sam's point of view. (But I do like seeing the fanart of Danny and Sam together.)**

 **Johnathen, you have a good idea and I'll look into it in more depth once I get the main three (Sam, Valerie and Paulina) out of the way.**

 **Enjoy this next chapter!**

 **Valerie Gray**

I have no idea how to answer that question. If you'd asked me that a few months ago, it would have been easy. I would have told you that I hated his guts. I would have called him a putrid poltergeist who brought us nothing but trouble. I would have tried to take him down by any means necessary.

But that was _before_ he saved the world from the Disasteroid.

And now, I don't know what to think.

In the day, I can forget. I can go to school and pull him away from the crowd before he's mobbed by admirers; I can pretend I'm his trusted friend and everything's cool between us.

But at night, I remember. The dreams are always the same. I'm chasing a glowing green ghoul on my hoverboard, I blast it a few times, it falls to the ground – and it turns into Danny Fenton. And even as I'm trying to bandage him up, he keeps shying away from me, crying and begging me not to hurt him.

I've woken up sweating too many times. _We used to date._ That's the thought that keeps hitting me in the head. _We used to date!_ I'd been aiming at the kid who stayed up late talking to me online and didn't seem to care about falling asleep in class. I'd been firing at the sweetie who smiled like a little kid when I rode the Ferris wheel with him.

I could have killed my boyfriend!

Do you realise now why I'm so confused? On the one hand, I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Danny Fenton. On the other hand, I wanted Danny Phantom out of my life. And now they're the same person? How am I supposed to react? Do I want him to stay or to go?

I still can't fully believe it. I don't look at my ex-boyfriend and see a violent homewrecker. I don't look at that ghost boy and see a dork who wants to be an astronaut.

I never called Danny Phantom a hero. Where other people saw a ghost risking his afterlife to stop an even worse ghost, I just saw a troublemaker. As his popularity rose, I told myself stories to justify the hunt. His good deeds were an act to lull everyone into a false sense of security.

It made him no better than my mother.

Ursula Gray was like Snow White's apple: inviting on the outside, deadly on the inside. In public, she was a glamorous high-flier with a rich husband and a fortune of her own and a daughter she loved, and all our friends thought she was amazing, giving her money away to charity and building a happy home. In private, there was no need for the mask. She only married Daddy on the rebound after the affair with her childhood friend's husband ended. The donations she boasted of never happened; she kept the money to buy more jewellery for herself. And she definitely didn't love her daughter.

If she was a prison guard, she wouldn't be satisfied with locking up the criminals. She'd break their legs to make sure they could never go anywhere again. That's kind of like what she did to me. She pushed me into a corner, telling me I was fat and ugly and good for nothing, that I was lucky to have all my parents' money because I definitely wasn't going to make it out there with just my non-existent looks and brains. And then she turned away – and then she spun back around and plunged the knife into my heart, giving it a few twists just to make absolutely sure I was dead inside.

I know it's an awful thing to say, but part of me was relieved when that pick-up truck ran a red light and slammed into her. I cried at the funeral, and so did Daddy, but it was also a relief not to have her dripping her poison into my ear.

If my mother taught me anything, it's that you're nothing without wealth and that you can't judge a book by its cover.

But I'm starting to wonder if everything happens for a reason – if there was a purpose behind my life being ruined by that ghost dog and his handler. I needed to lose everything to learn that I could be strong without it. I needed to come face-to-face with Danny Phantom to learn that sometimes, what you see really is what you get.

It took me way too long to realise the truth. The trigger was saving that ghost girl, Dani Phantom. With an "i". I only tried to stop her melting because Danny Phantom with a "y" claimed she had a human side. My job may have been to destroy ghosts, but I couldn't take the risk of letting a human being die.

That night, I had a lot to think about. Danny had also told me that Dani was his clone. And I'd seen Mayor Masters turn into a ghost himself. Pieces of memories from months ago started clicking into place. Danny Fenton always ran off, just like me, when news of a ghost attack spread. He had notorious ghost-hunting parents and would have been in their lab for long enough for _something_ to happen to his molecules.

I put two and two together and got four. I shouldn't have been surprised, but it changed everything.

I confronted him the next day. Even then, I didn't want to believe that Danny Fenton was somehow half-ghost, so I blurted out that I thought he was being possessed. The ghost boy was taking over his body and using it for his own ends. Maybe. I said I wanted him to have an exorcism or something. He couldn't deal with all that power on his own. How could he control it? I said he needed to tell somebody and get help. That was why I smiled when he revealed his true self in Antarctica, because he was finally being honest with people about who he was and what was happening.

But in the months since, I've seen the interviews in which he explained how he got his powers, and I've had to throw out my possession theory. Was that human side really his "true" self? If somebody took his powers away, would he still be Danny? Or would he be too far gone?

That's something I don't know.

And there's something else I _want_ to know, something more important to me. Did Danny have any idea that I was the Red Huntress when we were dating? If he did, and he knew that I was the one trying to blast him to smithereens, and he still wanted to be with me … what does that say about him? About me? About us?


	3. Paulina Sanchez

**Author's Note: Thank you for the favourites and follows and reviews! And Johnathen, thank you for the ideas! I've recorded them all and I'll see what I can do. I definitely want to cover Jack, Maddie, Jazz and Dani at some point. Vlad would also be interesting, as would Dan – I hadn't thought of them.**

 **Enjoy this next chapter! I hope imekitty will like it…**

 **Paulina Sanchez**

How much? How much?! Only INFINITELY! I've always been a sucker for the ghostly guys.

I'm not a stranger to the supernatural. I've been talking to spirits for as long as I can remember. My first birthday present from Mama was a full-length mirror, a family heirloom with luminous emeralds embedded in a garish gold frame. It doesn't just tell me how beautiful I am. It's a portal to the Ghost Zone.

Yes, trying to communicate with powerful beings from another dimension is pretty dangerous. Too many spectres are simply mindless and brutal. We've had a lot of close calls and broken china. But since the third grade I've met a few "friendly ghosts" – spooks who trust me and wouldn't want to hurt me. (They couldn't even if they wanted to. They'd have to get past Papa. And Papa is not a man you want to anger.)

When I was smaller, Youngblood and I had thrilling adventures in his pirate ship. Nowadays I like to help Poindexter and Dora sneak out of their lairs and have some fun in the 21st century. And Ember McLain is probably my oldest ghost friend; she's always been there when I need her advice.

But Danny Phantom was completely different. I didn't like him. I _loved_ him. The shaggy white hair, the piercing green eyes, the lightning-fast reflexes … it was love at first rescue. I'd never seen him in the Ghost Zone before, and I wanted to find out everything about him. I wanted to be the Lois Lane to his Superman.

I did everything I could to bring him to me. On the Day of the Dead, I built a little shrine for him and made a path of marigold petals from the mirror to the altar. They were so bright and orange that I was sure he couldn't help but find me. And yet he never turned up. So I did something more drastic. Whenever the Fentons spotted an ecto-storm and sounded the alarm, I didn't run away – I ran towards the chaos. I wanted to let myself be captured so Danny Phantom could swoop in and carry me to safety in his arms.

I'm blushing just thinking about it!

As for his secret identity, I figured it out pretty quickly. It was after that floozy Kitty possessed me. She's never been a friend of mine, only a friend of a friend, and I doubt she'll ever be more than that now. She used my body for at least a week, just to get back at Johnny in a ridiculous fight, and then she left me with a violent headache and vague memories of dating a total loser.

There was one reel of footage that stuck out more than the others. One minute, Inviso-Bill (as he was called then) was floating beside the pool. The next, Danny Fenton stood in his place and leapt over the railing. The "loser" who never did anything to get himself noticed was really the ghost boy who'd saved my life!

I kept it to myself. When the kids at school complained about Inviso-Bill ruining their day, I quickly hid the pictures of him in my locker. When he saved Amity Park and everyone changed their minds about him, I was the first to appear on TV congratulating him. When Danny Phantom dropped little hints about how "Paulina Fenton" would be such a nice name, I smiled and played dumb, pretending Danny Fenton meant nothing to me. It was simpler than admitting the truth.

I was going to come clean someday, maybe even ask him to be my boyfriend, but I left it too late. Why? I was scared, I guess. No-one besides Mama and Papa knew about my ghost pals, not even Star. I didn't know what would happen if I opened up. Would he think I was a weirdo? Would he think I was the enemy, canoodling with the ghosts he had to fight off day after day? It took me months to find the courage to tell him everything.

But by the time I was ready, he'd moved on. To the _Goth_. She makes my blood boil. She liked him for years, but she never admitted it. And while she didn't have the guts to ask him out, no-one else was allowed to even look at Danny. Hello? That's called "being a control freak!" I don't know what he sees in her.

Then again, what does he see in me? Why would he want to be with me after everything he's gone through? When he looks at me, he probably just sees a stupid shallow airhead who can't keep herself out of trouble. He'd have to spend half his life facing untold horrors to pull me out of the wreckage, and I'm sure he wouldn't want to put that weight on himself. He needs an equal, a girl he doesn't have to worry about, a girl who can stand up for herself … I hate to say it, but he needs someone like _Sam_.

I used to think he was annoying when he crept up on me, stuttered the old clichés about how it must have hurt when I fell from Heaven, and ran off. Now I'd give anything to go back in time and treat him better and date him while I still had the chance. He's gone beyond the hormones that once pushed him towards my pretty face. He's matured. I'm standing still, and he's moving forward. If we dated now, I would only hold him back.

Still, I guess a girlfriend who holds him back would be better than a girlfriend he couldn't trust, a girlfriend who was once trying to kill him. How could Valerie hold her grudge against him for so long? What happened to her daddy was an accident! It wasn't even Danny's dog! And I'm sure he would have apologised if she didn't keep shooting him! I did feel kind of sorry for her missing out on Dumpty Humpty concerts and stuff, so I tried to keep our friendship going, but we fell out over Danny Phantom. I believed he was good. She didn't. It was as simple as that.

I hate thinking about what that witch must have put him through – the wounds, the terror, the ruthless pursuit. Valerie was an enemy who showed no mercy, and I don't believe her sudden conversion to Team Phantom. I think Danny ought to have another ally, a better ally, someone who's always had his back and always will.

Maybe it's time to take a good long look at myself and work on being the knight in shining armour rather than the damsel in distress. Maybe it's time to borrow a jumpsuit from the Fentons and ask Mama and Papa a few more questions about the Sanchez family history. Maybe it's time for Youngblood, Poindexter, Dora and Ember to teach me their skills.

There'll be no more foolish mistakes and screaming for help. I'm going to show the world what I'm made of. I'm going to become a better me, more worthy of Danny Phantom.


	4. Star Baxter (née Dusty Von Strangle)

**Author's Note: Star doesn't have a surname on the show, so I picked Baxter. You may notice that Baxter is Dash's surname as well – I have a headcanon that Dash and Star are siblings. Sort of. It's all explained in the oneshot. Furthermore, I think the sales assistant in "Parental Bonding" might be Dash's mother.**

 **There isn't much to draw on from the show when writing for Star, so what I've come up with to fill the gap is weird and potentially controversial. It probably belongs in the Crossover section because it draws on elements of** _ **The Fairly OddParents**_ **. I hope you enjoy this chapter regardless! Please read and review!**

 **Star Baxter (née Dusty Von Strangle)**

It's … complicated.

I'm a smart girl. I don't want to boast or anything, but Dash thinks I could definitely get into Yale or Harvard if I tried. Yet Danny Phantom managed to surprise me. Actually, he did more than surprise me – he completely knocked me off my feet. Then again, his big reveal in Antarctica knocked everyone off their feet, so maybe I shouldn't feel so special.

Before the Disasteroid hullabaloo, I was never very interested in Danny Fenton. His parents were ghost-hunting freaks, thus rendering him uncool, thus rendering a friendship with him unacceptable in the eyes of the popular kids. (No, I don't always talk this formally. It's only because I have time to articulate my thoughts properly. Around Dash's friends, my speech is rushed and peppered with many a "like" and "so" while I struggle to keep up with the pace of the conversation.)

The only exception to my general attitude of dismissal was when I entered the Miss Teenage Happy Princess Beauty Pageant. I thought that doing his Math homework for him and giving him massages in the cafeteria would get him to notice me and pick me as the winner. It didn't work out. He chose that weird ultra-recyclo-vegetarian because she said some cheesy stuff about how it's what's on the inside that counts, despite doing nothing to show us what was inside her (apart from a few depressing haikus). I lost interest in him again after that.

Danny Phantom was a different story. This is something I have in common with Paulina, my best friend: I've got a thing for ghosts. When I saw him flying peacefully home after a victorious battle, leaving inky black vapour trails in the sky, my head would float into the clouds with him and butterflies would fill my stomach. I had a deep crush on him, but I knew I couldn't be with him. He was a ghost, and I was a fairy, and relationships between ghosts and fairies are illegal.

Yeah, I should probably clarify. My name isn't really Star Baxter. It's Dusty Von Strangle. I'm a changeling. My father is Jorgen Von Strangle, a so-called Magic Marine who basically runs Fairy World and rules over any creature that's small and has wings. He and my mother are both very influential and very well-known among fairies and ghosts alike.

Since the birth of Cosmo Cosma, the most powerful (and dangerously idiotic) magical creature ever recorded, fairies weren't allowed to procreate. However, my dad clearly wasn't very good at obeying his own orders. If anyone in Fairy World found out he'd broken Da Rules and had a child, it would have destroyed his leadership and reputation. So he and my mother snuck away to a random location on Earth, placed me with the Baxters, changed my hair and eye colour, took my wings off and tinkered with the Baxters' memories to make them think they'd had fraternal twins instead of a single son. Simple!

I learned the truth when I was ten. I put a tooth under my pillow, but instead of waking up to money, I met the Tooth Fairy herself – my mother, Pearl E. White – and she told me everything. She could do it then because fairies were allowed to have children again, and stories about secret babies were coming to light. Since that night, I've been getting to grips with my awesome magic powers, travelling to Fairy World and practising after school (with mixed results). I've been learning about the fairies' colourful history of fighting ghosts, then befriending them, then fighting them again.

Paulina doesn't know I'm the Tooth Fairy's daughter and I don't intend to tell her, for two reasons. Firstly, she's not very good at keeping my secrets – she can't resist gossiping. Secondly, she stopped believing in fairies when she was eight and went to Disneyland and saw a wrinkled old lady dressed up as Tinkerbell. She was traumatised for weeks. I'm pretty sure that nowadays, her only interest in the otherworldly is fawning over Danny Phantom.

I'd love to fight ghosts alongside Danny. I'd love to show off what I can do with a magic wand. I'd love to help him ensure that justice is done and then celebrate with a romantic picnic in the park. But I don't think I'm allowed to tell a half-ghost about the existence of fairies. Ghosts can know, sure, but half-ghosts throw up a legal grey area. Even if I could talk about it, I think Danny would just laugh at me. Believing in ghosts is already a stretch for the rational capacities. Believing in fairies is downright illogical.

It's funny. Whenever I think of Danny Phantom, I think of negatives. _I can't do this. I can't tell him that._ Maybe I only like him because he's out of my reach, cut off by metaphorical yellow tape that reads DO NOT CROSS. If he was just Danny Fenton, a regular teenage boy with embarrassing parents, I probably wouldn't give him the time of day. In fact, I didn't give him the time of day for years. It was only after he saved the world that I started stealing glances at him from across the cafeteria, looking away when he looked at me so I could pretend I hadn't just been admiring him.

But it probably won't go further than that. Since the fall of Pariah Dark, fairies and ghosts have been bitter enemies. One can't start a family with the other – unless they're ready for a long haul in Abracatraz. Fairy dust and ectoplasm don't mix, they say.

No, I can't deal with the stress of a forbidden relationship. I've got enough going on in my life even without Jorgen barking at me during magic lessons.

I've always craved security. Everything needs to be in its place and I panic when it's not. I'm not a bossy person. I just want to be in control of my own life. I like making timetables and establishing routines. I like categorising everything: my collection of books, my favourite cartoons, the Casper High students. I like it when social ladders have their rungs clearly labelled so you know exactly where you stand and exactly how you can rise and fall. Unfortunately, reality refuses to co-operate. Timetables change without warning. Too many objects fit more than one category. And the smallest of things can suddenly push you off the social ladder and send you crashing to the ground.

Believe it or not, I used to be more popular than Paulina, back when she'd just arrived and couldn't speak a lot of English. Being associated with Dash was enough to elevate me above the losers. That all changed after Dale called me Thick Arms in sixth grade and the nickname stuck for a good six months. It didn't help when Pearl – it still doesn't feel right to say "Mom" – warned me of the dangers of sugar for fairies: the more fat you carry, the less energy you have for casting effective spells. With a morbidly obese "father", a "mother" who works as a perky and youthful sales assistant in a clothes store and a "brother" obsessed with bodybuilding and football, it didn't take much to convince me to keep a _very_ careful eye on my figure.

But Valerie noticed when I started skipping lunch, and she threatened to tell Dash if I didn't chow down once more. So I had to eat what was put in front of me, no matter how unhealthy. Luckily, I've now worked out a little trick. I eat my meal as usual, right down to the very last morsel, pretending I'm enjoying it – and then I make myself sick when no-one's watching. I keep my weight down, Valerie keeps her mouth shut, I stay in the cool gang's good graces, I please Jorgen with my mastery of magic, and people are none the wiser.

Well, most people are.

Yesterday Danny caught me throwing my lunch in the trash can. He sat me down, held my hand and asked if I might have bulimia. I told him I didn't. Nevertheless, he wanted me to talk to my "parents" and see a doctor. I nodded and thanked him for caring, hoping he wouldn't notice the way my heart skipped a beat when he stroked my hair and said it looked thinner than usual. He's at his cutest when he's concerned for other people.

I haven't acted on his advice, though. The Baxters wouldn't understand. They'd put me in hospital and make me blather on about my feelings, and I can't do that with trusted friends, let alone total strangers. Besides, I've still got inches of blubber on me, so there's a long way to go before I'm skinny enough for there to be a problem.

To summarise my ramblings, I do love Danny Phantom, so much it hurts. It hurts because I can't be with him. Jorgen and Pearl wouldn't allow it, and neither would my messy life.


	5. Jazz Fenton

**Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews and constructive criticism! It's all very much appreciated. The last chapter strayed from canon, but we're back in familiar territory now. I am, however, moving away from romance for the moment – this chapter takes a look at Danny's big sister.**

 **Please read and review!**

 **Jazz Fenton**

I love him to the Moon and back. I've loved him since I first laid eyes on him.

There's a family video of the moment my universe shifted. When you first play it, you see a two-year-old me in my bedroom, throwing teddies around and bouncing on the bed and cackling like a witch, completely ignoring Dad when he calls my name. After he finally gets my attention and asks if I want to see my new brother, I shriek and run outside and slide down the banisters. The camera shakes because Dad can't keep up with me. He's huffing and puffing and warning me to be careful because babies are precious and need to be handled with care.

I stop suddenly. Dad nearly runs into me. I stand and stare at Mom, who's sitting on the couch with dark circles under her eyes. There's a tiny baby in her arms, dwarfed by a bundle of blue blankets. I approach with cautious steps, the camera zooming in as I do so. I stroke the tufts of black hair on his head. The baby's eyes slowly open, long enough for me to see that their colour matches that of the fleece, and then they close again.

The realisation that I was now a big sister must have flipped a switch in my mind. In that moment, I went from a two-year-old tearaway to a quiet and responsible "little woman."

Of course, I don't really remember the first meeting. I was too young. My earliest proper memory is of pulling Danny behind me while being chased by a prototype of the Fenton Weasel that had started moving of its own accord and sucking up everything it could reach. With parents as crazy as mine, oblivious to any person that couldn't walk through walls, disappear and fly, someone had to be in charge and keep an eye on Danny. I haven't forgotten the face he made when the Fenton Weasel latched onto the leg of his dungarees and nearly ate him.

Who knew that this little boy, terrified of his own parents' inventions, would grow up to be a world-famous superhero?

Even after all this time, it hasn't sunk in. In my mind, Danny's still about eight years old, blathering on about space and crying when he doesn't get any dessert. Now he's appearing on talk shows and showing excited schoolchildren what it feels like to go intangible. And he does it all so easily. He used to be wimpy and tongue-tied around new people, but I've seen him tackle Tiffany Snow's questions as if he was born for it. I never dared to hope he could become so confident, especially not in the early days that followed the Accident.

Keeping my mouth shut after the Spectra incident was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Whenever Danny's got himself in trouble, usually egged on by Sam, my first instinct has been to jump in and try to sort him out. Waiting on the side-lines did not come naturally at all. There were so many little things I couldn't help noticing. The chill in the air as he breezed past. The green glow in his eyes when something irritated him. The gashes stretching from his chest to his cheeks, which he tried to hide under a turtleneck. I wanted to point them out, but I knew the only reaction I would get would be a gruff insistence that everything was fine.

Poor Danny. He must have been terrified. And I was terrified because he was terrified. It didn't take much for me to catch him at the wrong time; what if he slipped up again? How would Mom and Dad react? Would they try to cure him or try to separate his human and ghost halves? Would they tie him down and slice him open out of scientific curiosity? Would they think he was an imposter and plunge their weapons into him?

There were two broad paths they could go down, each of which seemed equally likely. Would they reject him, abuse him, treat him like dirt? Or would they look past the freaky powers and love him just the same? I mean, their love for their son surely outweighed their hatred of ghosts, right? Right?

Well, I needn't have worried. They wouldn't have figured out that Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom if he floated right in front of them yelling, "I am a ghost! Fear me!" Which he did, once, as a test. Mom just asked, "How was school, sweetie?" without looking up from her copy of _Ghostbusters' Magazine_.

Once oblivious parents, always oblivious parents.

I've lost count of the number of times I've woken up to the sound of wailing and thrashing from the room next to mine while Mom and Dad slept through it. If I got out of bed and tiptoed to his door, I could hear him talking back to invisible enemies and telling Sam and Tucker to get away from invisible threats. One time he blurted out, "I'm going to rip you apart molecule by molecule!" and I could have sworn it was Dad himself in there.

Danny usually woke himself up with a yelp, but the silence afterwards got to me the most. I wanted to come in and hug him and comfort him, stroking his hair as I did when he was a baby. But I knew he would never want to explain what had happened, so having me there would probably make things worse. And yet just loitering outside, waiting for him to pull himself together, felt too cold and hurt my heart too much. So I would stand there, paralysed by indecision, while he presumably shed countless silent tears wishing he could talk to somebody, anybody, about what he was going through – without the fear of being destroyed and dissected.

It got worse, not better, after he knew that I knew, because by then he'd seen what the future could be like if he lost his humanity. It was just one more thing to worry about. I was allowed to run into his bedroom and shake him to wake him up and hold him as he wept. But that didn't compensate for the louder screams or the wilder sobs – or for the new routine he developed afterwards.

As soon as he'd dried his eyes, Danny had to go to the bathroom, turn the light on, take off his pyjamas and search his entire body for patches of blue-green skin. Then he had to measure his nails in case they'd grown into claws. Next, he had to brush his hair about a hundred times to reassure himself that it wasn't white and flaming. After that, he needed to stare at his eyes in the mirror to make sure they hadn't turned red, and then fiddle with his ears to make sure they weren't pointed, and then stick out his tongue to make sure it wasn't forked, and then bare his teeth to make sure he hadn't grown any fangs. And it wasn't enough to give himself a single check-up. He had to repeat it at least ten times, once for every year he was evil.

As you can imagine, it was all very time-consuming.

At first he only did it after a nightmare, but soon it became an essential part of the bedtime routine. Every single evening was spent imploring him to hurry up in the bathroom because some of us had tests the next day. Once, he was convinced that his nails had grown by an eighth of an inch over the week when the average rate was supposed to be only a tenth of an inch in a week. He convinced himself that it was the beginning of the end and that any second now he'd be killing everybody in the world.

This madness carried on through Christmas and the New Year, and he got less and less sleep each night. I don't know how he kept going to school and pretending to be normal. I would have given up my powers long before he did. I wouldn't have been able to trust myself with them. (I guess he thought he didn't really have that option in case the ghost half went rogue and merged with Plasmius, however unlikely that scenario was.)

The turning point was summer vacation. Danny didn't say exactly what happened on his road trip with Tucker and Sam. Maybe he was finally plucking up the courage to tell his parents. Maybe he'd had a good run of victories over those malevolent ghosts. Maybe he'd talked things over with Clockwork. Whatever it was, it must have been good. He reduced the number of pre-bedtime inspections to five, and within the month it was down again to one.

I'm definitely not so concerned about my brother now. The night after the Disasteroid phased through the planet, he brushed his teeth and went straight to bed. I didn't realise how remarkable that was until the next day. He _hadn't_ spent half an hour searching for signs of a monster. He _hadn't_ hidden in the bathroom to mentally torture himself. He knew now that the people by his side would always be there for him, no matter what. He'd accepted who he was and what he was capable of. He could call himself a hero.

He's come so far and I couldn't be prouder of him.


	6. Dani Fenton

**Author's Note: The Brod Road, I like the project you suggest! I've tried to keep these oneshots focused on the question in the title, but I can't help sneaking in ideas for deeper stories. I suppose I'm testing the waters to see if people like them. But I'm also sating my craving to write without worrying about how I'm going to complete a multi-chapter story if life gets in the way. I've already left too many fanfics unfinished and I try to avoid that as much as possible. I don't want to start something unless I'm sure I can end it.**

 _ **Anyway**_ **, here's another platonic chapter, from the point of view of a clone. Enjoy!**

 **Dani Fenton**

Uh, well … I don't know. I haven't spoken to him that much. I mean, he seems really nice, but that's not enough to say I love him. Is it? We call each other "cousin," but cousins are pretty distant relations. Some people go their whole lives without seeing their cousins. I don't feel comfortable calling him anything else at the moment. "Brother" is too intimate, and "Dad," while technically correct because I share most of his DNA, is just too weird.

Why didn't I stick around to get to know him? Why did I keep running away?

Half of me – the ghost half, I think, the cool and rational half – knows I can trust him. We have a lot in common besides genetics. We both like Dumpty Humpty's music. We both know nearly everything about NASA. We're both unique, both too ghostly for the human world, both too human for the Ghost Zone. We both try to do the right thing even when it's tough. And then there's the whole adoption thing… Maybe he _is_ a dad to me. He's caring, he looks out for me and he's ridiculously overprotective. And I like it.

But for all that, the other half of me – the human half, the emotional half, the half that still feels pain – isn't ready to let anybody else into my heart again. Not after I lost everyone I loved.

We used to be a family of seven: a mother, a father and five clone children. Our mom was called Maddie. She was fuzzy and sweet and lived in a computer. Our dad was a half-ghost called Vlad. I had three brothers who were awake and one who was asleep. Dad called the sleeping brother Daniel. He didn't call the rest of us anything, so I named my brothers myself. The skeleton was Michael, and his nickname was Skinny Minnie. (I thought I was so funny back then.) The big grey guy was Rocky because he had rock-solid muscles. The slippery one was Storm because he was wet like rainwater and had a short temper.

When I told Dad what I'd done, he smiled and said, "Interesting. You might just be the greatest clone … Danielle." He named me because I was smart. That made me happy.

We had big plans, the seven of us. (Well, the six of us. Daniel never said much because he was dreaming.) We were sickly kids, prone to melting, but Dad was going to heal us. I just needed to find our – uh – the first one, the one we were clones of. I don't know if there's an official name for it. Anyway, we'd get his DNA, and then we'd be better, and Daniel would wake up, and we'd be able to play together without disintegrating. The family would be complete.

What actually happened after I made contact with Danny Phantom? The family started falling apart.

Skinny Minnie ran away but never came back. We found out later that he'd died on a golf course. I tried not to let it get to me. There was nothing I could have done to help him. Sadly, I couldn't say that about the other two. I had to stop Rocky when he went mad and started threatening our last hope, but I may have sort of accidentally killed him. Not long after that, I watched Storm melt right in front of me. There was no time to react. I just floated there while he sank into a puddle, weak and whimpering, nothing like his namesake.

Three of my brothers died. They _died_. And poor Sleeping Daniel never got the chance to live. All he did was look around the lab, stretch out a hand to his father, and watch his own flesh bubble away.

I lost Mom in the chaos that followed, when the computers crashed and she started glitching. I lost Dad, too. Or maybe he was never really there. He wasn't a good man. He was full of contradictions. He ordered me never to lie to him; at the same time, he taught me how to lie to other people. He talked a lot about the importance of loving yourself, scary ghost powers and all; at the same time, he praised me for pretending to be someone I wasn't. He had two faces, a smiley face and a frowny face, and he wore whichever one he needed to get what he wanted. When push came to shove, his frowny face won out. He made it pretty clear that I was just a tool to him, a pawn in his giant chess game.

I had to disappear.

A lot of people may have suffered, but I'm glad that Danny could fight with me and get me away from that fruit loop. I told my cousin, "You'll see me again soon," and I wanted to keep that promise, at least initially. I just needed some time alone to cry and rage. I needed to scream where nobody could hear me. I needed to sob where nobody could see me. I needed to let it all out.

But then I needed to move forward. I told myself that Danny was part of my past, not my future. I told myself that he would only hurt me again and force me to be what he wanted me to be. I hoped I could become more than the clone of a Dumpty Humpty-loving future astronaut. I hoped I could be myself and carve out my own path.

Living on the streets was tough. The nights were cold and the ground was filthy. I had to steal to survive, even as the little voice in my head kept telling me that stealing was wrong. I had to force my body to stay in place and not turn into goo.

But it was better than being with Dad – I mean, Vlad. We didn't exactly end on a high. The last thing I did before I left was attack him. I didn't know how mad he would be with me for doing that and for ruining his plans.

I found out soon enough. He caught me, strapped me to an examination table and tried to melt me down to build someone better, someone who didn't wreck his lab and punch him in the face and kill his loved ones.

He didn't just threaten my body, though. My mind was all over the place.

I think a part of me still wanted him to love me, however unlikely it was given our history.

I think a part of me still loved him despite everything he put me through.

I think I died for a couple of seconds.

Looking back, it was actually nice to be dead – dark and quiet and peaceful. I didn't have any bad thoughts, and no-one else bothered me. The pain only came when the ectoplasm put itself back together again, when the molecules burned and fused and stung.

I flew away from Danny again, not to cry and rage this time, but to think – not to indulge my human half, but to use my ghost half. What was I doing? What was my purpose? What was I living for? My dad had tried to destroy me, my brothers were long gone, and I was pretty sure my cousin would soon get sick of having to clean up after me. In short, my life sucked.

I _almost_ longed to be back in the dark and the quiet and the peace.

The only thing stopping me getting there was the news channel.

The TVs in the shop window displayed picture after picture of the Disasteroid. I watched my cousin stand outside Amity Park's Town Hall and ask everybody in the Ghost Zone to help him put his plan into action. I flew to Antarctica as soon as I could find where it was on a map. After all, I was at least half-ghost, so I had to do my bit for the planet.

When the time came, my throat was dry and my ears were ringing. I was suddenly scared it wouldn't work. But then I actually _felt_ the Disasteroid slip through Planet Earth. It made the whole world shudder. My hands and feet started vibrating. A chill shot up my spine.

After about ten seconds, it was over. It felt like much longer.

I didn't fly through the portal like the other ghosts. I didn't belong with them. They isolated themselves and were proud of it. I couldn't live like that. I craved that sense of belonging. So I stayed among the human beings, hovering on the edge of the crowd.

I was there in the background when Danny transformed. I gasped and clapped along with the rest of the audience. Yet my stomach was churning. What if he found me? Would he expect me to do a big reveal as well? I started to float upwards to see if the portal was still open. He noticed, changed back, caught up with me and grabbed my ankle. He wouldn't let me get away that easily.

The next day was a day of sitting around his kitchen table chronicling every ghost attack to his parents. I didn't say much because I hadn't been there. I just listened to all the gory details and watched his dad scribbling furiously into a notebook.

And then _it_ happened. We got to the part where Danny saved me for the second time, and out of nowhere, he asked his mom, "Is there some way we could adopt her?"

I didn't want to go to sleep that night in case this happiness was all a dream, in case I woke up in some gloomy alleyway surrounded by trash cans and broken bottles. Luckily, that didn't happen. The Fentons are still here, and so is the good feeling.

I'm going to get a new family! The kids will have their own personalities instead of being clones, and the mom will be real instead of a flickering hologram, and the dad will be big and jolly instead of a lean, mean, manipulation machine. It's going to be great!

Hopefully.

I'm going to get a new name, too. Mr Fenton – I mean, Jack – I mean, _Dad_ – thought it would be less confusing if we didn't have a Danny and a Dani in the same family. I don't know who I'll become yet. Elle would be the obvious choice, but it doesn't feel like me. It's too soft and girly. I think I'd like a name that means something, like Joy or Harmony or Liberty or Hope.

Hope Fenton. Hmmm…

Well, there'll be plenty of time for that later. The important name right now is the surname. I'm a Fenton now. Not a Masters or even a Phantom. A Fenton.

Maybe one day I'll be able to say I love my family and not be afraid that they won't say it back. For the first time in forever, I'm daring to hope that that day will come.


	7. Ember McLain

**Author's Note: Deadpool, I have thought about doing a chapter for Clockwork. Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon might be a bit more difficult because one is a real person and the other is a television channel (and television channels can't feel love). But I'm not ruling anything out yet. I'll wait and see what happens.**

 **I hope you like this next chapter – it's the first one from a ghost's point of view! (Dani didn't count because she was only a halfa.) Please read and review!**

 **Ember McLain**

I don't know if you've heard, but I don't do duets. Especially not with twitterpated concert-wrecking dipsticks.

Youngblood is the only exception. He feels familiar, like a little brother. We had a good thing going on his pirate ship – a skeleton crew to do our bidding, immunity from ghost attacks, and a sick plan to get rid of all the adults. Ironically, we would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Yeah, Phantom is one of those ghosts who likes to show up at the last minute to ruin everything. He's like, "You can't do that!" and I'm like, "Stop dipping in my Kool-Aid!" and we're both like, "ATTACK!" and he always wins.

Danny Phantom is a meddling doofus and I don't want to be anywhere near him.

Danny Fenton, on the other hand, is a cutie pie.

Phantom's just an over-the-top superhero persona, an act to impress that Goth gal. Fenton's the real deal. Fenton is who he is deep down. Everything changes after the rings pass over his body. He's quieter. He's less aggressive. He's more willing to fall under the spell of my mind-controlling music.

Even when we had the pirate ship, and he put on that orange jumpsuit and talked the talk, he couldn't walk the walk by himself. He needed to gather a posse of teenagers willing to hang on his every word in order to get the job done. Kind of like me, in a way.

I dig the weak guys. I hate Phantom because he's too tough, but I like Fenton because he's not tough enough. It's fun to mess with him. There's this adorable moment when his facial expression goes from confusion to realisation to irritation that gets me every time.

Some girls like a muscular dude to sweep them off their feet and move mountains for them and fight off all the other losers vying for their attention. I've never been like that. I'm a strong, independent woman who don't need no man.

Aren't I?

Maybe I need someone soft by my side so I can feel tougher than I really am.

When I was alive … wait, is that the right phrase? I know a lot of ghosts argue about it. The Continuationists – Désirée, Poindexter, the Lunch Lady – say we were all human beings, and then we died and became ghosts. The Obsessionists – Vortex, Undergrowth, Pandora – think we're totally separate creatures with awesome powers, but some of us develop fixations that make us adopt the looks, memories and personalities of human beings who may or may not have been real. You know what? I'm just going to pretend I used to be human. It's much easier to talk about things in that way.

When I was alive, I was the youngest of ten (too many) sisters. I used to hate my name. My big sisters got much cooler ones: Diamond, Blossom, Candy, Ocean, Venus, Dolly, Snow, Rose, Honey. They were names that suggested strength, beauty, youth, colour, depth, irresistibility.

But what kind of name is Ember? It told me who I really was: the soot left over from my mother's blazing affair. I was the only sister whose dad wasn't really my dad. People saw me, said, "That's Ember, the illegitimate McLain child," and moved on. I meant nothing more to anyone. Mom was very clear about that.

Not even becoming the worst kid in school got their attention. I threw tantrums and wrecked stuff, but they just waited for me to cool and then they swept me away – as if it was nothing. As if _I_ was nothing. I could have thrown myself off a cliff and no-one would mind. And when you compare me, the troubled tearaway, to the things my big sisters were achieving, it's clear that I didn't have the best childhood.

Most kids blew their allowance on candy and comics. I blew mine on matchboxes. I used to light up every single stick one at a time just to watch the flame slide down until it scorched my fingers. Later, I went further. I laid the matches on my body and created perfectly straight burns on my skin. If I had enough of them, I could spell things, too. I could write EMBER on my chest and LOSER on one thigh and DIRTY on the other thigh. It hurt, obviously, but I honestly didn't care. Why should I have cared? It wasn't like anyone else gave a hoot about me or what I did to my body.

I wouldn't have lasted as long as I did if it wasn't for music.

Rock wasn't my first passion. I first learnt to play a plain old acoustic guitar, and I used to write ballads about falling in love and other such nonsense. We lived in a tourist town by the sea, and the view of the ocean from the beach was always beautiful. Every Saturday, I woke up before everyone else, snuck out onto the sand, sat on a boulder, scribbled and strummed while watching the waves crashing on the shore, and returned with a new song in time for breakfast.

The rock phase came in the September I turned sixteen. Instead of buying a new matchbox each week, I saved my money for an electric guitar. After I got it, I reinvented myself. My hair, once dirty and black, was dyed electric blue to complement the guitar. My skirts grew shorter and tighter. My face was caked in eyeliner.

I had it all planned out. I was going to make something of myself. I was going to be a rock star, and Johnny Thornton would go on tour with me.

Johnny Thornton was the most popular guy in school. He was the blond-haired green-eyed captain of the football team, and he owned a motorcycle – in other words, he was a chick magnet. My first dream was to get a record deal, and my second dream was to get him to notice me. And then, almost out of nowhere, he did. He invited me to the movies to see a cheesy chick flick.

I waited outside all night. In December. Wearing nothing but a black mini-skirt and a vest that didn't cover my midriff. (I had problems with dressing myself.) Occasionally an usher with acne would ask me if I was okay. I told her every time that I was waiting for my boyfriend. "He's just running late," I said. In fact, he ran so late he never turned up. I missed the entire movie. It probably sucked.

I walked home in the snow and flopped onto the couch. I no longer had the energy to crawl up the stairs.

(A few years later, Johnny and I finally found each other in the Ghost Zone. He said he was sorry for the prank. I whacked him in the face with my guitar. I wanted nothing to do with him. Luckily, he's attached to someone else now and doesn't bother me. Looking at how badly those two fall out and how sickeningly they make out, I think I dodged a bullet.)

The next morning was a Saturday. My parents – well, Mom and her husband – wanted to take us out to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. I told them I was still tired from my date that wasn't a date, so they left me home alone.

A couple of seconds after the van went out of sight, I gathered up the wrapping paper that Mom had neatly arranged in the living room. I spread it all over the floor. I draped it over the furniture. I taped it to the walls. Then, for good measure, I soaked the place in alcohol from Mom's "special chest."

I coiled the remaining sheets around myself, lit a match and dropped it at my feet.

I don't remember too much after that, except for the golden flecks stinging my eyes, the black smoke frying my lungs, and the flames' sandpaper tongues ripping open my skin.

I hate my life. I hate how short it was, how pointless, how lacking in love and fulfilment. Okay, yes, I'm the one who ended it, but it wasn't an easy decision. I only started the fire because I'd seen the awful truth. I used to believe in happy endings, but after that night I knew that staying alive wasn't going to make things better. I was cursed. My dreams would never come true. I would have lost every record deal I got, let myself be used by a string of boyfriends, and become addicted to drugs. I sank into the darkness because it promised me no more pain.

I'm sick of being soft and breakable. I'm sick of being played with and tossed aside. I need to take charge and be in control, even just for a little while. I need to be the one deciding who loves me and making sure they keep their promises, because I'm the only one I trust not to mess up my afterlife.

So having a babypop boyfriend like Danny Fenton would be perfect for me. He doesn't look like the kind of guy who says he's going to be at the theatre and then doesn't turn up. He seems more willing to listen and understand and let me cry if I need to. He wouldn't try to control me – he would let me take control. Phantom would try to be strong, but Fenton would rather help me to be strong. Phantom would sit and brood and look out for himself, but Fenton would stand up and look out for me. Plus, I hear he knows a lot about the stars, and I love the sea, so something like swimming in the ocean on a clear night would be a perfect first date.

But the times they are a-changin'. Ever since we stopped the Disasteroid, Danny's been hailed as a hero. The articles, the interviews, the TV series about his life that's being filmed right now – it's getting to his head. He's been gradually losing that sweet scent of vulnerability.

No problem. All it'll take is a well-timed love song … and then he'll be in my clutches.


	8. Dan Phantom

**Author's Note: Sorry for the lack of updates – I've been on holiday with my family, in a place with a poor Internet connection. But I'm back now, and while I was away, inspiration hit for some** _ **Danny Phantom**_ **headcanons. So I'll explore them here, in a chapter requested by Wicked.A.**

 **I'm upgrading this story's rating from K+ to T because of this chapter. Dan is a nasty piece of work, and somebody needs to think of the children. I hope you all still like it!**

 **Dan Phantom**

Which Danny Phantom? The man I am now, or the child I used to be stuck with?

If it's the former, then … a lot. I am free. I am tough. I can do anything I want. I am awesome. No elaboration on these points is required.

If it's the latter, then my strongest urge is to go back in time and punch that kid in the face.

It never used to be this way. I once cared about Danny, believe it or not. He was like a brother to me. I warned him not to do stupid things, and even when he couldn't hear me, I kept trying to get his attention. We had a bond. If he perished, where would that leave me?

I have no memories of life before our union, if I was even living back then. There was only an infinite blackness, devoid of emotion and thought – until, all of a sudden, the place was flooded with light. In the noise and the chaos, I was being sewn to Danny. I filled his mouth as he screamed. I reached into his fingers as they curled in pain. The green slime that carried my consciousness penetrated his skin and mingled with his blood. His body was infused with me. I saved his life.

From the moment he woke up, I already held some knowledge of basic matters. I had names for the objects around me, and I could instantly identify Danny's body parts as they appeared in the mirror. As time went by, I learned more about the items and people most relevant to this human being I now lived with. I learned to recognise Sam and Tucker as friends, Jazz as an annoying big sister, and his parents as a threat.

I could see everything he saw through his eyes. I could hear everything he heard with his ears. I could feel everything he felt on his skin. But Danny was always the one who dictated what we saw and heard and felt. I used to have at least _some_ control over our body. I could make his hand turn intangible right as he was about to have a spoonful of cereal. It was fun to experiment and play such practical jokes, but the fun didn't last. He struggled against me until he wrenched the capacity from my grip.

Whenever he "went ghost," he was drawing on my ecto-energy, consulting the ghost within. His double life was only possible because I was there offering my support. If he was Spider-Man, then I was the Venom symbiote. However, rather than rejecting me, he took Sam's advice and embraced the ghost half. He never knew I existed, but I could tell he was trying to be careful with his newfound abilities. In return, I shared his experiences. When he caught another troublemaking revenant, I cheered for him. When he blushed at the touch of Sam's hand, I involuntarily quivered with infatuation. When he awoke from a nightmare in which he was being dissected by his own parents, I waited with him until he nodded off, taking on his pain to let him sleep.

It disgusts me to say it now, but I loved him. When you're so close to someone that you're never apart, the inevitable outcome is great love. Either that, or great hatred.

What happened to us?

Somewhere down the line, his ego got in the way. He would forget about his duties to Amity Park and let his head be turned by the lure of popularity, or the promise of a date with a pretty girl, or the mindlessness of video games. None of the distractions had any point whatsoever, and they irked me. Didn't he understand that he had bigger concerns to deal with? He wasn't supposed to change his mind. He wasn't supposed to promise to do something noble and then break off halfway through to please himself.

It got to the point where I preferred separation to togetherness.

We had split up just three times before the Nasty Burger explosion. The first time, Sidney Poindexter displaced Danny's soul without his permission, leaving me in the shared vessel. That bumbling nerd had no idea how to use my powers; I was glad when Danny returned to me. The second time, neither of us noticed the Ghost Catcher until I found myself floating alone, looking down on Danny. I was young and confused (and his parents were nearby), so we instantly fused back together.

The third time was different. That was the moment when the terror of loneliness became the relief of independence.

I had objected to Danny's heroic method for quite some time. He acted on impulse, made mistakes and ruined his public image. He was more and more frequently swayed off-task by the inanities of Paulina Sanchez. Even when he proved himself to the townspeople by defeating Pariah Dark, he hadn't been conserving our energy, so we nearly perished. But this time, at last, I had the chance to be a proper superhero. No distractions. No cumbersome secret identity. More time to dispense my unique brand of ghostly justice.

The problems arose when Tucker messed around with the Ghost Catcher. Instead of one man with all the powers, he created two boys with half the abilities and none of the efficiency. And then, at the end of it all, we were back to Square One. Yes, having a human body could be useful for getting past ghost shields, but that was negligible compared to the freedom and superiority I experienced for those beautiful twenty-four hours. I didn't see, and still don't see, why Danny had to completely reabsorb me.

Being pierced and yanked out by Vlad's Ghost Gauntlets was both the last straw and the best thing that ever happened to me.

Danny knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to die. He wanted to sink into the infinite blackness I had emerged from, the blackness I looked back on with contempt. He had tried every weapon he could get his hands on: the bread knife, the hunting rifle, the chemicals under the sink. But every time, his body would heal itself. Whether he hurt his ghost half or his human half, the other side would plug the gap, smooth over the wound and make him better. Neither the blade at his neck nor the bullet in his head nor the poison running down his throat could make any difference. But if both halves were separated and _then_ lacerated, maybe he would have peace at last. That was his so-called logic.

Just thinking about his feebleness makes my ectoplasm boil. The boy was lazy. It was as simple as that. I used to believe "Fun Danny" was merely an exaggeration, a side-effect of a split that maybe wasn't completely clean. But in my later epiphany, I realised that his inactivity ran deeper. It was an unchangeable part of his personality.

Whenever something didn't go his way, his actions betrayed his weakness. When he couldn't balance his ghost-fighting life and his personal life, he gave up on trying and handed the bigger burden to me. When he didn't believe he was smart enough to pass the C.A.T., he gave up on studying and resorted to cheating. When he realised that the fallout of _that_ decision might be more than he could bear, he gave up on living and wallowed in grief and shame. The boy was always letting go, surrendering to his ever-changing emotions, and I was sick of it. And now he was trying to join his loved ones instead of enduring his penance for causing their demises? The hatred I held for him in that moment was so intense it could outshine the Sun.

I did not go gentle into that good night. I was not allowed to while an old burden weighed on my mind. As his belongings were being packed up and carried out of Fenton Works, Danny barely registered anything that happened around him. It meant that neither of us remembered seeing the portal deactivated. If we hadn't destroyed it, then Amity Park would still need a hero to fight the escaping villains. I resolved to stay on this Earth and continue what we'd started. It seemed only rational.

What better protector could our town have than a dedicated creature with the self-control to never be completely blinded by sentimentality – unlike the old Danny Phantom?

There were two reasons for mixing with Plasmius. First, it was a way to punish Vlad for going along with Danny's childish whims. Second, combining with a more experienced and battle-hardened ghoul (the opposite of Sidney Poindexter) would give me a host of new skills, such as duplication, allowing me to develop into a more capable superhero.

What I hadn't anticipated was the rush of twenty years' worth of bitter memories, or his electrical core attacking and smashing my icy core, or the angry voices that screamed in my brain and set my hair on fire. It was awful – at first. But in the moment the turmoil settled into silence, I relished in this new sensation of promise lingering beneath the surface. I forgot about Amity Park, about the past and the future, and focused on the present.

After Danny's anaesthetic wore off, the first thing he saw was me, and the first thing he felt would have been the ectoplasm from my chest wounds dripping onto his feet. He started babbling questions to Vlad (who hid behind a door) before ordering me to leave him alone.

"Oh, so now you _don't_ want to die?" I sneered. "Make up your mind!" I wrenched open the straps on the upright surgical table. "Oh, wait, you can't. You're just a slave to your feelings, aren't you? Like grass in the breeze." Proud of that simile, I picked him up and threw him across the room. "And I'm going to walk all over you."

However, as I advanced on the trembling wretch, who had curled into a ball to stem the flow of blood from his torso, I realised that something wasn't right. If I killed him, I would just be giving him exactly what he wanted: the loss of all those emotions that were dragging him down. There were a few more things I wanted him to feel. I wanted him to understand the turmoil he'd put me through. I wanted him to know what it felt like to watch somebody close to you ignore your pleas and do the wrong thing while you were powerless to stop it.

I dragged him into Vlad's inactive ghost portal. One hand sunk its claws into Danny's still-tender chest, making him whimper, and forced him to stand pressed against me, facing the innards of the chamber. The other hand slammed the portal's ON button.

With another blast, strong enough to drill a hole through the mansion, I locked Danny within me.

There was something different about this time. I could hear him. He never acknowledged my existence when the roles were reversed, but now I could feel the pressure he put on my skull, begging me _not_ to break that man's neck, begging me _not_ to blow up those apartments, begging me _not_ to sweep through this Maternity Ward murdering women and children one by one. It had no effect. Cities were reduced to piles of rubble. Landscapes lost all their colour and variety, fading into a putrescent brown mess. Planet Earth was slowly but surely degrading – and all because he cheated on a test!

For ten years I had one goal: to make Danny pay for his lifetime of poor choices. If he wanted to abdicate responsibility and let someone else take control of the situation, he also had to abdicate the right to stop that power falling into the wrong hands. _My_ hands. At the end of every day, I stood on the outskirts of a new city, watched the Sun set on the damage I had caused, and listened to Danny weeping for all the babies I'd slaughtered. I was never happier than when I was making him suffer.

On one such evening, I finally picked a name for myself. I never needed one while no-one knew who I was, but rising to dominance gave me inspiration to cement my new position. My name is not Daniel, or "God is my judge." My name is Dan. I am "He that judges." I don't defer to God, or even to the Devil. I need no other authority. I make the rules. I decide what is and isn't acceptable.

At least, I would, if it wasn't for Clockwork.

His influence was initially minimal. When we first met, I'd just finished smashing up Johnny 13's motorbike in an argument; I was playing a game with myself called "Upset as Many Ghosts as Possible in a Day." The meddler appeared out of nowhere, wielding his scythe, and told me he was going to turn the clock back to make sure the quarrel never happened. I let him do it. And then I broke Johnny's legs.

Clockwork never seemed to get the message. Instead of cutting off Ember's flaming ponytail, I wrecked her vocal chords. Instead of leaving an obscene scar on the Lunch Lady's face, I ripped her apart molecule by molecule. He kept erasing uncomfortable events, only for me to perform even worse deeds. I owed him a lot, in that respect. He gave me the chance to torment Danny in bigger and better ways.

But on the day I broke through Amity Park's latest attempt at a ghost shield, he changed his tune. Sam and Tucker showed up after ten years of being dead, wearing his trademark medallions, and I just knew that something was up. Clockwork was conspiring to make an even bigger change, one that would be harder to reset.

I needed to thwart the scheme. I had an interest in ensuring this future came to pass. I was a stronger, better person because of those destructive experiences. So I worked to keep history progressing exactly as it should. I trapped a young Danny in his future. I retook the test for him. I bound and gagged everyone important to keep them within the Nasty Burger when it blew up. I would not let Danny Fenton get away with his selfishness and sloth.

Sadly, right at the moment his whole life would have fallen apart, the so-called Master of Time swooped in and saved the day. Ugh.

How did I not see it before? Every instance of "correcting" the timeline was a plot to make me seem more evil in Danny's eyes, to inspire him to make sure I never existed. I was allowed to live for so long because Clockwork wanted to teach an undeserving brat a hackneyed lesson about how cheating is wrong. Once that was accomplished, he saw no use for me. That's why I'm here in his lair, crammed into the Fenton Thermos with my arms and legs bent in places they should not be bent.

I don't hear the old Danny in my head anymore. He's gone quiet. He's probably rejoicing in the knowledge that the young Danny doesn't have to go through what he did. The thought of that homewrecker sitting in happiness and contentment is truly sickening.

But brooding on him is pointless. My disgust is moving from Danny to Clockwork. That spectre has too much power for his own good. I'd always assumed that the glory and notoriety I'd achieved were all down to me. In reality, I was a puppet, and Clockwork was pulling the strings. Well, it's about time I cut loose.

What did I tell the boy? "I'm still here. I still exist! That means _you_ still turn into _me_." I wasn't talking to Danny, though I was happy to let that pathetic child think otherwise. Clockwork kept an eye on the boy for months afterwards, and through the cylindrical wall, I could pick out the sobs from his sleepless nights. It was music to my ears. No, I was actually talking to my younger self. I'd hoped to weaken Danny in our scuffle, grab the Ghost Gauntlets and release the phantom from that prison of flesh, ready to take on the world. If it weren't for the premature Ghostly Wail, I might have succeeded.

But I have another plan in the works. I like making plans these days. I must have picked it up from Plasmius.

Step One: get out of this stupid Thermos.

Step Two: vaporise Clockwork.

Step Three: go back in time and catch Danny at his weakest moment.

Step Four: pull my younger self out of the bodily shell.

The details still need fleshing out, of course. I'll have to find something to do with Danny. I won't give him the satisfaction of having the sweet release of death, so I've got to invent a new torture for him.

It'll also take time for my younger self to climb to my level. I didn't reach my peak for ten years, and in the new timeline, we could have to wait even longer. He hasn't had the personal tragedies to spur him on. But I suppose a few "accidents" can be arranged. He has the potential to be a great ghost, and with a teacher like me, I know he'll get there eventually.

There's more than one way to become a monster.


	9. Maddie Fenton

**Author's Note: The Brod Rod, I** _ **had**_ **intended to post Kitty's tale after Ember because of the way they were connected by Johnny, but I had a flash of inspiration for a Dan chapter and wanted to get it out there before I forgot anything. And now the Kitty chapter has been delayed even more because I've constructed yet another headcanon – one about Danny's origins and how he may be related to Timmy Turner. Please read and review!**

 **Maddie Fenton**

What a ridiculous question to ask a mother! I love all my children more than anyone else! What other answer can I give?

All right, I suppose Jack's on the same level, but that's a different kind of love. Ahem.

The love I have for Danny is usually best expressed by worrying about him. He was a pretty sensitive kid, nothing like those rowdy boys at elementary school. I'm sure he cried more than Jazz did when she was a baby. It also took him much longer to get over his fear of the dark. If I had to count the number of times he's woken us all up by yelling that the monsters were going to get him unless somebody turned the light back on, I'd run out of fingers and toes.

But I really shouldn't stress anymore. While I was too busy brooding over the slipping grades and missed curfews, he was secretly growing and maturing. I know now that he's mastered his powers, he carries the Fenton Thermos wherever he goes, and Jazz and Danielle and Sam and Tucker will always have his back. He's got this.

Even if he wasn't a universally-adored superhero, I wouldn't change him for the world.

I don't think he understands that. Why would he? Before the Accident, Jazz got all the attention for her academic promise, while Danny seemed to drift along behind us doing nothing remarkable. After the Accident, Jack and I gave him more attention – by chasing him through the streets trying to tear him apart. What kind of message does that send to a kid? "Unless you're gifted with intelligence (like the sister who is superior to you in every way), we might not love you. But don't have a freak lab accident you couldn't have foreseen and then try to make the best of it by being a hero. Then we definitely won't love you."

He may be more confident in himself, but it's come at the cost of the confidence in his parents.

The euphoria from stopping the Disasteroid has faded. I've noticed that Danny flinches whenever I walk past him or brush against his skin, even if I'm not wearing a Spectre Deflector. Every time he twitches, it's like he's stabbing me in the heart. It hurts because it's all my fault.

We came too close to killing our own son. I remember the sick glee with which I aimed our blasters at Danny's head and I shudder. We may not have succeeded in hacking him to bits, but we've destroyed something else. A gentle bond of love has been severed, leaving a chasm buffeted by winds of distrust and regret, and Jack and I can't blame anyone except ourselves.

No-one has broached the subject yet. We're all walking around as if the floor is made of glass and ready to shatter when we least expect it. We can't carry on like this. We ought to sit down with Danny and remind him how precious he is to us. We ought to tell him the truth.

And the truth is that Danielle isn't the first child we've adopted.

Our son had been an accident. We'd saved up enough money to quit our jobs at Axion Labs and work from home. We were going to have more time with our daughter and more freedom to concentrate on ghost-hunting inventions. But the celebrations … got out of hand. The next thing I knew, I was throwing up every morning.

He may not have been planned in the same way Jazz was, but we weren't going to say "No" to another kid. We filled the spare bedroom with baby stuff, we warned Jazz that she'd have to share our attention, and we dealt with my weird nightly cravings for Nasty Sauce. (I never wanted a burger, just the sauce.) I carried on at Axion for as long as I could until Damon Gray told me to get some rest.

It was all going so well – and then it fell to pieces.

Even now, after so many years, my heart can still be ripped to shreds. None of it makes sense. An umbilical cord is supposed to connect a mother to her child. It passes on the food she's eaten and helps the baby to grow. It's not supposed to be a murder weapon. It's not supposed to strangle someone who can't even breathe.

Not once did he open his mouth to gasp for air. Daniel had died before he could be born.

They gave him to me anyway. His lips were blue. His skin was grey. He was so cold and still, with not even a heartbeat disturbing his peace. It wasn't right. I wanted the warmth and the movement and the beautiful chaos that Jazz had introduced when she was born. Most of all, I wanted noise. I wanted to watch the rise and fall of Daniel's chest as he experimented with his vocal chords. It never happened.

I wish I'd never held him. It just made it harder to let him go.

When Jack drove us both home, his eyes were so watery that he had to pull over. We'd stopped right next to an abortion clinic. How ironic. All those women were marching through the gates hoping to get rid of their children, when all I wanted was to hear my son wailing in the backseat and know that he was alive and well.

Without really registering anything, I got out of the RV, grabbed a random lady's arm and asked if we could have her baby.

Her name was Sophia Turner. If you stood her next to Danny now, you'd definitely see the resemblance. They have the same bright blue eyes and the same black hair, except her hair was longer and scraped back into a tangled ponytail. And her eyes gave away her surprise.

Once Sophia (and Jack) got over the shock of what I'd done, we came to her home, a minimalist apartment, and she told us what she was doing at the clinic. A few months before, her work took her from Dimmsdale to Amity Park. Her ex-boyfriend, a surly redhead called Vic, chased her down because he couldn't accept that she wanted to break up with him. He certainly gave her something to remember him by: an evening of violence, a procession of nightmares and a child she wasn't ready for.

She couldn't bear to tell her brother … what was his name? Something long and complicated. Apparently, everyone just called him "Dad". As the name suggests, he could be pretty overprotective. She'd been hoping to have an abortion before he or anyone else found out. We persuaded her to keep the kid and then give it to us after it was born.

Getting a legally binding arrangement figured out wasn't easy at first, but after Jack chased a spooky secretary from City Hall, the adoption process suddenly went much more smoothly. Funny, isn't it?

Sophia and I became, if not friends, then at least close acquaintances. We butted heads only once. I wanted to know if it would be a boy or a girl. Sophia didn't. She would have preferred a daughter. She threatened to go back to the abortion clinic if she found out she was having a son. She told me, "Boys turn into men, and men turn into beasts, and beasts have a taste for women. Just like the ones in the movies." In the end, it was kept a surprise.

Her waters broke nearly a month early. My sister Alicia had come to stay, so we left Jazz with her and rushed to the hospital. My heart was in my mouth throughout the labour. I chewed my lip so much it started bleeding. We'd spent months getting to know the mother. We'd felt the baby kicking through her skin. Would it all be in vain?

When the second Daniel's screams rang out through the ward, I burst into tears.

The next few weeks were a torturous waiting game. On the few occasions when they took Danny out of the incubator, they made Sophia feed him. She grimaced throughout. In time, though, I was allowed to rest him on my chest, and that was when the magic happened. I looked down on him as his little fists clung to my shirt, and I knew without a doubt that I would love him forever and ever.

I shouldn't be so surprised. It's been scientifically proven that skin-on-skin contact helps parents and children to bond. (But try telling that to Grumpy Mr Don't-Hug-Me-In-Public-Because-It's-Embarrassing.)

Sophia and I stayed in touch for a while; I called her and told her when Danny started walking and talking, even though I knew from her monotonous voice that she wasn't interested. Then her brother had a child of his own, and she dutifully moved back to California to be closer to her nephew – Timothy, I think they named him – and we drifted apart.

Danny doesn't know about his origins yet. I'm pretty good at pretending he's ours and briefly forgetting the tragedy ever happened, but I can't keep it a secret for much longer. Sophia must have seen the news by now. She must know about Danny Phantom's identity. Is she proud of him? Will she want to meet him? Would they get along?

She may have been blind to my boy's double life, but I wasn't. I didn't see it until a couple of months before the Phantom Planet fiasco. I had a suspicion that there was more to Danny Phantom than the public saw. His name had always been too similar to Danny Fenton's to be a coincidence. He'd been taunting us. And those eyes – they weren't the same colour as my son's eyes, but there was something about the way they stared down the barrel of my gun that sent chills down my spine. They were soft but wide open, with black eyebrows knitting together, a look of familiarity and fear mixed together with a plea for mercy.

What was he afraid of? I know we've attacked him plenty of times, but that was before we knew the truth. If he told us about his alter ego sooner, we wouldn't have destroyed him. We wouldn't. I don't hate him for being a ghost. I love him for being my son. That's why I want to help him now. That's why I'm trying to understand exactly what happened in the Accident.

Danny claims he's half-ghost. That means he's half-dead. Doesn't it? How is that even possible? Is he really half of one thing and half of another? Is he a human borrowing ghost powers from someone else? Could he even be a ghostly imposter pretending to be human?

Is it bad that a part of me still wants to open up Danny Phantom and see what's going on in there?

Yes, it's sick. Yes, he would hate us if we went through with it. But what other choice do we have? I need to know how these so-called halfas work. I need to know that Danny won't waste away and die on us. I've already buried one son. I can't lose another.

No. Forget it, Maddie. It's never going to happen. Danny would never willingly go under the knife. We could promise not to pull out his organs, but he wouldn't believe us. The trust he used to have in us won't come back overnight. We'll have to take things one day at a time.

When the moment is right, I'll tell Danny about Sophia and Vic. Once he's registered that revelation, everything else should come more easily. I'm going to ignore all thoughts of vivisection. Right now, it doesn't matter what he's like on the inside. What matters is what we're doing together on the outside.

Wherever he is, whichever town he's defending, his father and I will be waiting on the side-lines, armed with the Fenton Foamer and the Jack o' Nine Tails and everything else he needs. Those ghouls won't lay a finger on him if I can help it.


	10. Jack Fenton

**Author's Note: Thank you for the lovely review, Phildev!**

 **Having just written from Maddie's point of view, it seemed only fitting to put Jack next. It's been more of a challenge than his wife's chapter – I realised after writing Cosmo's segment in "How Much Do You Love Timmy Turner?" that stupid fathers are the hardest for me to write about. Hopefully this one's all right…**

 **I've previously hinted that Danny is a cousin of Timmy Turner, and now I'm adding Vicky's family into the mix as well. Please read and review!**

 **Jack Fenton**

First Danny, and now this! How can I make myself any clearer? My son means the world to me!

What did he think I'd said that one time? "Poor Jazz. She's always been my favourite." He shouldn't have taken it so seriously. Jazz had just been bitten by a ghost bug. I was scared. People always say things they don't mean when they're scared. Even if it was true, which it isn't, why should Danny care? It wouldn't mean I didn't love him. It would just mean I loved him ever so slightly less than Jazz. So –

Great globs of ghost goo! No wonder he didn't tell us anything! If all he knew was that he was ranked below Jazz, and he had no idea how low he sat under her, why would he trust us with anything? Wouldn't he be scared of dropping further down in the pecking order? If he realised how loved he was, maybe he'd have been more honest with us.

In some ways, our family is growing stronger than ever before. In other ways, we're falling apart.

I see the strength in the girls. Jazz has become a lot more enthusiastic about ghost hunting, and she's getting the hang of those bulky weapons pretty quickly. When she slips into Maddie's hand-me-down jumpsuits, she looks unstoppable. And the new girl Danielle is a lot of fun. She may have had a tough time with Vlad, but somehow she always knows what to say to put a smile on our faces. She'd make a great sidekick. (Plus, it turns out she loves fudge almost as much as I do, so that's a definite bonus.)

I see the weakness in me, and in my wife, and in our son. Danny is a strange kid. He can dodge bullets, take down screeching wraiths and cram them into the Thermos as if it's as easy as breathing. Yet when he gets home and sees us, his _parents_ , he goes pale and starts stuttering. He makes all kinds of excuses to avoid talking to us. He hides in his room and we can't make him come out.

It's pointless asking Danny if he's okay. I've sat at the breakfast table talking about peeling him apart like an onion – while he was right there. Of course he's not going to be okay.

What hurts the most is knowing that we went through so much to bring Danny into our family in the first place, only to push him out again.

To be honest, I wasn't completely enthusiastic about the whole adoption thing at first. You know how people tell you not to make big decisions in the first year of mourning? Well, Maddie must have forgotten about that. Our son hadn't even been buried and she was looking for another one. She latched onto Sophia Turner and wouldn't let go.

Sophia told us some stuff about the father that concerned me. She'd met Vic's family a few times while they were dating. He had a niece called Victoria who looked almost exactly like him – the same red hair, the same thin smile, the same pink eyes that gave me the creeps. Who knew what other bad things he'd been up to? Who knew how his kid would turn out?

There were plenty of points that got my goat. If it was a boy, Maddie wanted to give the second one the same name as the first. Why? Wasn't it a little morbid? Wouldn't it seem as though we were trying to shape a replacement to fit the mould of the original?

Maddie and I had our biggest fight over the adoption, bigger than all the Christmas debates about Santa Claus's existence _combined_. All I did was suggest that Sophia shouldn't come over to our house in case the ectoplasmic residue lying about messed with the baby. For some reason, Maddie thought I was blaming her for continuing to work at Axion and causing our first son's death. We were inches away from divorce.

But things changed after Danny was born.

He came a month too soon. He lived in an incubator for weeks. He seemed miniscule and delicate compared to the surrounding machines, like a china doll thrown among stampeding bulls. We had to stick our hands through these too-small holes if we wanted to touch him. I nearly got my fat wrists stuck a few times, but I learned to be careful. I somehow managed not to dislodge any of the tubes. I stroked the skin on Danny's arm and I tried to let all my love flow through my fingertips into him, in the hope that it would help him get better.

If I could go back in time and relive those years, I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't stop the adoption going through. I can't imagine a world without Danny.

We've feared for that boy's life more times than we're comfortable with. The early days were tough enough, but then came the Accident. Tucker ran upstairs as we walked through the front door, babbling something about being electrocuted. Immediately pictures of our first boy flickered in front of my eyes. We raced past the messenger and found Danny sitting in the basement with his arms wrapped around his legs, rocking and groaning. His white jumpsuit peeled away to reveal more scorched clothing and patches of raw red skin. Sam knelt beside him and tried to tell him he'd be okay. They were bathed in the green glow of the now-active portal.

As he heard us coming, his face turned as white as a sheet. He shuffled backwards when Maddie examined the burns. I called him stupid for going near a portal that wasn't working properly, and he nodded in agreement. He wouldn't say anything when we demanded to know where he was hurting; he just squeezed his eyes shut so we wouldn't see his tears. He had the perfect opportunity to tell us about his intangibility and his invisibility and the way he kept floating away. He didn't take it.

That sounds like I'm blaming him, doesn't it? I'm not trying to. If I'd been blasted by a ghost portal and found myself disappearing and slipping through the floor at odd moments, I'd be pretty scared, too. Maddie and I could have handled it better. We could have been gentler with him. We could have scolded him less for being in the lab unsupervised. We could have been more comforting, giving him plenty of hugs and letting him open up in his own time, instead of instantly hitting him with question after question. It would have saved us a lot of problems down the line.

Instead, things only got worse from that point onwards. His grades began slipping at an alarming rate. We Fentons always got As. (Or, in my case, Bs. Solid Bs!) Then again, Danny wasn't really a Fenton, was he? But that was no excuse. We cared about education. It was the key that could open almost any door – and those doors might have closed forever if the Accident had been more serious. I tried telling him this, but he never wanted to hear it. Apparently he had bigger things to worry about than a couple of bad grades.

He kept shirking his chores (leaving me to pick up the slack) and coming home hours after his curfew. The worst time was not long before the Disasteroid incident. He got home at 3:26 in the morning. 3:26! He was supposed to be back by 10:00 the night before. To say we were angry would be an understatement. We were _fuming_. Sam and Tucker's parents had formed a search party to find him. We'd sat at home waiting for him, perched at the bottom of the stairs until our eyes ached and our butts went numb. Jazz was about to call the police when he finally crept in.

When we asked for an explanation, his response was a ragged, "Can't we talk about this tomorrow?"

I bellowed, "It _is_ tomorrow!"

And still he kept his mouth shut and scurried upstairs. Unbelievable. I could have grabbed him and hit him there and then. But what good would that have done? We later learned that he'd teamed up with Valerie to save Danielle from Vlad. He'd been doing something noble with his time out. Did we have any right to criticise him for that?

I never saw the signs, not even when they were right in front of me. Mr Lancer spoke to us once about some bruises he'd seen on Danny's face. I assumed that some kid at school was giving him a hard time and that it would blow over soon. I forgot all about it. Another time, Maddie asked me about Danny and Phantom's similarities. I thought she was being ridiculous. There was no way our son could be a ghost! Wouldn't he be setting off our detectors and alarms? Wouldn't he have dozens of scars from the fights? Wouldn't he have run away from home long ago out of fear of us destroying him?

How stupid can one man be?

Part of me still can't believe he was ever afraid of us. We're his parents! We would never dissect our own son! But another part of me _can_ believe it. That's the part that keeps me awake at night. That's the part that replays all the missed signs, all the raised voices, all the fearful sideways glances.

Everything changed after the Accident. We can't get back what we had before. The evidence is all around us. The Fenton Finder picks up on Danny's presence in both ghost form and human form. The room temperature drops whenever he comes in. He's spending more and more time in the Ghost Zone, and sometimes he brings a few so-called friends back with him – a blue-haired singer, a green-skinned princess, that punk who used to date Jazz, and more. I'm worried he'll go through the portal one day and never come back. I'm worried he might already be more ghost than human.

It won't change a thing, though. After all that time spent ignoring his problems and sabotaging his heroics, I'd better back off and give him a little independence. I'll support him whatever he decides to do. A good father is always there for his son, whether his son is a ghost, a boy, or something in between.


	11. Kitty 13

**Author's Note: Well, it took longer than expected, but it's ready now. Heeeeeeere's Kitty! (That was a reference to "The Shining," but with Kitty instead of Johnny.)**

 **There's a Tumblr user called FountainPenguin who sort of helped to create a headcanon about where ghosts can have children and where they can't. I've alluded to that (hopefully not too graphically) in this segment. Enjoy!**

 **Kitty 13**

How can I answer that question? I already have a boyfriend! A boyfriend I've been with since the night I died, might I add!

But if you're asking me to pretend Johnny doesn't exist, then … well, I guess I wouldn't mind dating Danny Phantom instead.

The trouble is, I don't really know him. There haven't been many times when Danny and I came face-to-face in battle. I pounced on him once because he was attacking Johnny and almost killed him (again), but that's it. Danny's not really an enemy. Just an annoyance.

Even if we were never truly foes, I don't fancy being his friend, either. Johnny's the one who comes over to his house to talk about the Ghost Zone, not me. I still don't fully trust those human beings. They're singing our praises now we've saved the world, but how long will it last? When will they start rudely sucking us out of their houses again?

Actually, humans aren't all bad. I used to be one, so I guess I can't get too huffy. And I did have a lot of fun messing around with Danny Fenton in Paulina's body.

I was sick of Johnny flirting with other girls in front of me. I needed a break, and something pulled me to Danny telling me I would find something good there. I probably shouldn't have overshadowed Paulina to get closer to him, given that she was one of Ember's friends, but the desire to see what it was like to be beautiful was too strong.

As Danny and I "dated," I got to see another side of him, the side that didn't try to bother the ghosts. He showered me with compliments. He covered his locker with photos of the two of us. He went on picnics with me. He took me to all the best places in town. He "helped" me get a strike at the bowling alley. He would do whatever it took to make me happy. I felt warm and fuzzy around him, even though it was just a lie because he thought I was someone I wasn't.

Huh. Maybe I had more fun with him than I realised.

No. Forget him, Kitty. Johnny's your man and he always will be.

We met when I was sixteen and working as a waitress in a diner. Our town sat in the middle of a desert, so business was always slow. Still, it gave me experience with difficult customers, and I did earn a little more money for college.

One day, a guy in a leather jacket parked his motorbike outside and strolled in. His hair was shaggy, blond and dirty. He spent a long time staring at me before ordering some generic breakfast dish. He barely ate the food when it came. He just swirled his fork through the egg yolk while his tired green eyes followed me around the room.

Maybe I should have been creeped out. I know a lot of girls who would have kicked him to the kerb for leering at them. But I enjoyed the attention. It made a change from the balding old guys who usually dropped in, the ones who buried their heads in their newspapers and never gave me a second glance.

The stranger came back the next weekend, and then we started bumping into each other in the street, and then it got to the point where not seeing him became the exception rather than the rule.

With each meeting, I found out more about him. His name was Johnny Thornton. He was twenty years old. He used to live on the West Coast. He was the captain of the football team in high school. He once asked an unpopular girl out for a dare, stood her up, and turned on the news the next day to see that her house had burnt down – with her still inside. Since then, his life fell apart. He dropped out of high school and rode away on his motorbike, finding and losing different jobs every month, never remaining in one place for too long.

Until he met me.

Johnny wanted to stay in this town, so he worked for a few days with our local mechanic, fixing up old cars. The boss let him go after he accidentally set somebody's Mustang on fire. When he ran out of money to pay for his motel, I invited him to stay at my place. To say my parents were not happy about that is like saying the Beatles were popular. They told me he was clearly bad news. I told them I was sixteen now and they couldn't boss me around anymore. Ten minutes of bickering later, they threw their hands up and said that if I wanted to go out with a degenerate and ride on a death trap, so be it.

They didn't realise how literal they would be.

The relationship soon got serious. Johnny pulled out an emerald ring and offered it to me. He'd won it in a poker game and hung onto it in case he needed to sell it for cash. The previous owner told him it was cursed. He laughed at them. Anyway, he gave me this ring and asked me if I wanted to get out of this town. He promised me adventure. We were going to see the whole country: the mountains, the forests, the prairies, the beaches, the cities. We wouldn't worry about finding food or getting jobs or buying a house. We would let the road take us wherever it wanted us to go.

I had to think about it – for three seconds. I let him slide the ring onto my finger. It was a date.

Later that night, while my parents were sleeping, I got dressed and put on my two favourite things: a bright red jacket and a purple scarf. I knew Johnny thought they made me look hot. I climbed out the window and we set off on his motorbike.

We didn't get far before we reached a level crossing. There was a train coming. He revved the engine and took a chance.

"We're not going to make it, Johnny!"

"Oh, yes, we are! I'm feeling lucky tonight!"

A snarling green-eyed creature flickered across the train's headlight.

Johnny and I screamed.

The journey ended.

At least, I thought it had. For the longest time, we were floating in obscurity. Then the bike roared into life again, we sped up, and the blackness cleared out to reveal a swirling green wasteland.

We didn't see much of America on our road trip, but we did get to explore a place neither of us had been before: the Ghost Zone.

I didn't have time to be mad at Johnny for killing us both. I was too busy fighting off the skeletons that chased us up and down and between the floating purple doors. Luckily, we still had time to squabble about his bad driving while I whipped the monsters away with my scarf.

"Look at us," I said once we'd outrun them. "We're already like an old married couple."

"I want a divorce," he grumbled.

Those first few days were chaos. As if the unfriendly faces weren't enough, we had to deal with the shady character we'd seen by the train, who kept following Johnny around like a puppy. A puppy that drove its owners to their death and brought them nothing but bad luck in the afterlife.

Things were tough for a while, but we're used to this place now. We've figured out how things work. We've got everybody's lairs mapped out in our minds. We've learned to recognise when a portal is about to open and about to close. We've tamed Shadow (as Johnny called him) and we can call on him to help us out of sticky situations. As long as we all stay together, nothing bad happens and no-one bothers us.

The Ghost Zone might be fun to explore, but Johnny and I like returning to the Human Realm, too – and not just to see the sights we never had the chance to visit while we were alive. It's been said that ghosts can only have kids if they're in the Ghost Zone. There's no risk once they step outside. Romping in the Human Realm is the best form of birth control ever. Believe me, I've tried it.

Spectra did a lot to help us find out where we were and what we could and couldn't do. We don't hang out that much these days, but when we do, we get along pretty well. She's quite witty when she wants to be. It's hard not to laugh when she's making fun of those overly perky psychiatrists, hopping all over the place and talking about "acci-don'ts".

I've even made friends with Johnny's ex-girlfriend, the one who set herself on fire. It took a while for her to trust me, and it took a while for me to forgive her for hitting Johnny the first time we found her. But we're cool now. Ember's an awesome girl. I can talk to her about anything. If we were still alive, we'd have slumber parties and paint each other's nails and complain about boys and spill our deepest secrets.

One of her secrets is that she thinks she has a crush on Danny Fenton. She prefers him when he isn't being a superhero, when he's an average kid who can't stand up for himself.

Do I like him, too? I don't know. I'm not sure which half I would prefer, the ghost half or the human half. Wouldn't it be pointless to pick a side? I mean, it's not like you can separate the two. There's only one Danny. If I really had to choose, I'd go for the ghost, simply because his white hair makes him look cute. But that's completely hypothetical. Isn't it?

Sometimes, a pretty boy catches my eye. I think that happens to every girl, single or not. But ultimately, it means nothing at all. Johnny and I have been through far too much for me to break it off now. I can't imagine spending my afterlife with anyone else. Not even someone as handsome as Danny Phantom.


End file.
